After a busy fortnight or so celebrating Christmas and New Year, along with two very enjoyable weddings, it’s high time for some form of a regular routine again.

There’s nothing like paperwork to bring you back to reality. Now that a new year has begun, it’s time again to assess how the farm has performed financially over the past 12 months. It will be interesting to see what effects the weather has had on the farm’s profitability.

Will the excellent second half of the year have delivered enough to make up for the extra costs incurred during the harsh spring/early summer?

The survey of suckler farmers and their intentions in last week’s Irish Farmers Journal provoked an interesting call from a businessman/hobby farmer friend of mine at the weekend.

Even though he has a ruthless business-like head on his shoulders, he is first to admit that his activities as a beef farmer only amount to “a bit of craic” to keep him out of the house, but nonetheless he’s rarely too far off the mark when it comes to analysing the nitty-gritty of farming, or any business for that matter.

Coming from the background that he does, his pet hate is the fact that most farmers he knows fail to apply key performance indicators, or KPIs as he calls them, to the way they farm.

The trigger for this call was the annual cost of keeping a suckler cow. His main point was that the majority of respondents were just guessing off the top of their heads as to the annual cost of keeping a suckler cow.

Does he have a point? Only one in every 60 beef farmers completes a profit monitor each year.

When I looked back at the survey, over 60% stated that it costs them €500 or less per year to keep a cow. What am I doing wrong?

Personally, I’d love to visit some of the 20% of respondents that are able to keep a cow for under €400 per year. It is costing me nearly twice this and I’m aware of farms incurring higher costs.

Then the conversation turned to the old reliable, beef price.

“Has the time come for drystock farmers to come together to set up some sort of national producers group that has the scale to stand up to the monopoly that the retailers have been allowed to create in the absence of proper competition?” he asked of me.

“Some sort of system that would allow farmers to have a hand in price-making, rather than being downgraded to price takers.” Once again, does he have a point?

Look at the structure that prevails in dairying, where, with the exception of a few small privately-owned entities, farmers have direct ownership through co-ops and, to a certain extent, in plcs of the next stage in the processing of their produce.

Any profits from processing are channelled back to them. These structures are governed by boards whose primary responsibility is the interests of the farmer shareholders. Contrast this with the meat industry. I wonder how much time is spent at board level discussing ways of improving the price paid to the farmer for their stock?

We regularly hear great accolades being directed at the quality of Irish beef from political and industry sources but, as every drystock farmer is well aware, talk is cheap.

If customers are not willing to put their money where their mouth is, what does the future hold for suckler farming? Is it an industry that was artificially created by EU subsidies that is doomed in the absence of direct support to return to pre-MacSharry levels?

Can the necessary efficiencies at farm level, combined with a realistic return from the market, ever be realised? Time will certainly tell.